LETTER OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE,
IN THE NAME OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II
TO THE WORLD MOVEMENT OF CHRISTIAN WORKERS

Mr President,

For many years, the World Movement of Christian Workers has maintained a trusting,
open, and persevering dialogue with the Holy See, particularly through the Pontifical Council for the Laity. These
relations had their highest and most significant expression in the meeting you
had, you and your collaborators of the retiring World Board, with the Holy
Father on 12 March last, on the occasion of your recent visit to Rome: You were
able to inform him of your apostolic concerns, assure him of your faithfulness
and your ecclesial commitment, and receive from him the encouragement and
guidance you needed. May these relations continue and develop, thanks to an
increasingly close collaboration between Catholic workers' movements and associations and their pastors at the diocesan
and national levels, and thanks to their participation in organisms of pastoral
coordination. The movements and associations which have institutional ties with the MMTC will experience this
collaboration and this participation more intensely.

The Holy Father is happy to address now all Catholic workers gathered in Strasbourg these days for
the "International Conversations" and the world Assembly of the MMTC, to greet
them in a brotherly way, but also to encourage them and strengthen them in
faith. I am happy to transmit these words which come from the heart of the
universal Pastor of the Church and are dictated by the responsibility that the
pastoral ministry confers on him as successor of Peter and Vicar of Jesus
Christ.

On this occasion, how is it possible to fail to recall, in the first place,
the meeting the Sovereign Pontiff had at Monterrey on 30 January last with an
innumerable, faithful, and fervent crowd of workers who make up an integral part—and how significant it is—of the People of God in Mexico? They wished to
follow and listen to the Servant of the Servants of God as he passed through
their country. The substance of the message delivered by the Pope on this
occasion concerns the workers as a whole and, in particular, all of you gathered
in Strasbourg for ecclesial work. Accepting this message as your Mexican
comrades did, you will meet, rest assured, a deep desire of the Holy Father.
Moreover, why not see in this immense crowd of workers, gathered around the Pope
at Monterrey, a sign and a symbol, as it were? A sign and a symbol of hope, a
sign and a symbol of the meeting of the Church with the great masses of workers
all over the world.

This meeting, or rather this full implantation of the Church in the
working-class environment still calls for a great many efforts on
both sides. To do so, it is necessary to deepen, in the Church, awareness of
several convictions which must be familiar to you. It is important, of course,
to have rightful esteem for the role of workers "who are the chief artisans of
the prodigious changes which the world is undergoing today" (Vatican II Council,
Message to Workers). It is necessary to be inspired by the sense of the dignity
of work, of the worker and of the world of work, to try to overcome the
different situations of injustice, even discrimination and oppression, from
which workers often suffer still, in the different types of societies, whatever
their ideological trend and degree of development. If it is important to
sustain the best and most legitimate expressions of the values of solidarity,
brotherhood, and friendship lived within the working-class world, it is
necessary also to show discernment with regard to ideologies which, while
claiming to assume the problems and represent the aspirations of workers, prove
to be incapable of opening up to them the ways of integral liberation.

The Church recognizes the Workers' right of organization and participation. She
therefore calls on the workers' movement to renew itself, following the lines
that have just been recalled. But above all, she proclaims loudly that Jesus
Christ alone ensures complete liberation, without frontiers of time, space,
culture and social condition, and this through the Good News of salvation of
which the Church is the sacrament.

That is why it is urgent that Christian communities should not cease to feel
committed in the evangelization of the working-class world; that real vocations
as working-class apostles should arise more and more among the
workers, bearing evangelical and evangelizing witness within the workers' world
itself. To assume this responsibility, the Church expects and requires a great
deal of the MMTC: as a movement of laity, workers and Catholics, it must play
the part of a bridge and ferment.

Between the close of your "International Conversations" and the beginning of
your world Assembly, there will be "May the 1st" a day marked both by the
holiday and by the reminder of working-class solidarity, and, in the Church, by
the celebration of St Joseph the worker and therefore by the memory of the
"carpenter's son". May it be for you the
opportunity to renew, with Christ and in his Church, your commitment for the
evangelization of the working class. May the bread shared in work and
solidarity, in view of new forms of anticipation and a just distribution of
goods, reach its full dimension in the Eucharist, the Bread which gives eternal life, in the Body of
Christ which the Church prolongs in history until the definitive Kingdom when
the faithful Worker will enter the joy of his Lord!

May the Apostolic Blessing which the Holy Father sends to you, to your
collaborators, to the new leaders of the MMTC, to all participants in the
"International Conversations" and to the world Assembly, be a token of new
graces of the Lord.